Messages from an Avocado

Isaiah 11:1, et al

 

 

          Occasionally, something happens on the way to the pulpit, and it becomes necessary to go to plan B. Plan B is never my idea. It always comes late in the week and completely disrupts my intentions for the message on Sunday. This is one of those weeks. My daughter sent me a copy of an email she received from a friend. Her friend’s name is Jocelyn, and she is a Canadian midwife working in Rwanda.. Here is what she wrote:

              So today, I enjoyed a fresh, creamy avocado

              from a Rwandan avocado tree in our yard that

              we discovered as a shoot growing out of our

              compost heap. Five years ago, we transplanted

              it to our front yard and have since been waiting

              patiently for fruit.  Kingdom lessons on display

              for me today:

 

1.    Redeeming things from the compost pile is worthwhile.

          I’m reminded of a headstrong Jacob who became Israel, the patriarch of the twelve tribes …or a persecutor of Christians named Saul who became Paul the thirteenth Apostle. With God there is no such thing as too late. Sometimes things or people just need to be fertilized to realize their real potential.

2.    Seeds planted in fertile soil produce much fruit.

          In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus reminds the crowds gathered on the beach that when seeds are planted not among thorns or rocks or shallow ground, but rather in good soil, they produce 30, 60, even a hundredfold [Matt 13:8, Mk. 4, Lk.8].

3.    Just like the fruit we wait for takes time to mature for harvest,

        the spiritual fruit in our life takes time to ripen.

          Jocelyn refers to the fruit of the spirit recited by Paul in Galatians 5: 22, 23, the fruit of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Spiritual fruit is the basket of traits given us by the Holy Spirit once we have given over to the truth of the gospel. It is a convicting way to come to our lives. Paul says further in that passage that “if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”

4.    The harvest comes at God’s appointed time…(this one, strangely

        enough, is right in the middle of rainy season). Do not lose heart.

          At first, it might seem strange to think of a fruit tree coming to harvest in the middle of the rainy season. We in the West have little dealing with rainy seasons. We have learned when to plant based more upon warm weather than rain. But here we speak of an annual yield that comes in the middle of the rains. God’s world is like that. God has his own timing for his creation, and that includes us. 2^nd Peter was written by Peter probably from Rome not too long before his martyrdom in the mid 60’s AD. It serves as a brief, final reminder to the churches that by God’s grace, they will live a life pleasing to him. In the third chapter, starting with verse 8, Peter tells us that   

               “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years,

               and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is

              …patient toward you, not wishing that any

              should perish, but that all should reach

              repentance. But the day of the Lord will come

              like a thief…” [2 Pet. 3: 8-10]

 

5.    We may plant or water, but it is God who makes things grow. He

        is the ultimate One.

 

          Emily’s friend Jocelyn refers to 1 Corinthians 3:5-7, where the apostle Paul reminds a fractured Corinthian church that neither he nor Apollos nor anyone other than God himself is the author of the harvest. Paul says: “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted. Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives you the growth.”

6.    Harvesting happens one fruit at a time with avocados. The tree is full of fruit that’s not quite ready yet…be patient.

 

          Jocelyn poetically expresses the doctrine of Sanctification, the process of a believer coming ever closer to God. Paul expresses it for us in Romans 6:22 in this way: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. Jocelyn tells us to be patient as the fruit readies itself, and Paul tells us in Philippians 1: 6: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

 

7.    There’s more than enough to go around…there’s a lot more avocados than any of us can eat…rejoice at harvest time and share the joy.

 

          This Rwandan medical missionary sees the majesty that is the kingdom of God. It is big enough for all who would believe, for all who would come. In Matthew 9: 37, Jesus tells his disciples as they go throughout the cities and villages of Galilee that “The harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  

          As it happens so many times to us in life, we walk down the path, sincerely trying to stay in step, looking for the message that we need to hear that day, and if we pay attention, we sometimes find that God has another errand for us to run, another way to look at the same day, the same walk. That happened to me this week. I was blessed with the forwarded email of a friend of my daughter, and for me, God’s message for this day was unpacked from the fruit of an African fruit tree. The message is so sublime that it is also profound. What can we learn from the avocado tree to apply to our lives? Fruit comes from droppings as well as cultivation; much can come from little; the fruit of the Spirit takes time to mature; God decides the harvest time; we are only seed planters; be patient; sanctification is a process, not an event; God’s harvest can include everyone who believes.

         Since I have borrowed so heavily from Jocelyn, I hope she might permit me to add this one observation. It is one more message from a tree and it involves a prophecy made long ago. The prophet Isaiah utters this prediction in the11th chapter of the book bearing his name: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit…” [Isaiah 11: 1]. We know that root today to be King David, a man after God’s own heart, from whose line Jesus himself was yet another branch.

        Can a tree have a mission? Of course it can. All God’s creation has a mission. The mission of the avocado tree is simple, but profound. It is the same message that God gave to Adam in Genesis 1:26. It is the same message he gives to us today. Grow, be fruitful and multiply. Our fruit is not avocados. It is disciples [Matthew 28: 19, 20].